First Hunter Pace and Give Away!

If anyone has been paying any attention to the "plans" tab (or to this blog at all for that matter) you will see that I have my first ever hunter pace coming up this Sunday!!!! Baring any bad weather, sick baby, broken truck, broken horse, broken tack etc.....we are heading about an hour away to participate in our first event with the Dynamic Duo. I'm very excited.

In true Crabby Acres fashion, the BO over there (who hasn't left the farm property with the horses in literally 15 years) has decided that knowing we are going, she has to go too. Fine. The more the merrier and now that we are no longer a part of Crabby Acres, I don't have to feel like I need to ride with them. Or feel guilty when I leave hours before they do. But what got me was the fact that she specifically went out of her way to convince our babysitter who has only been out of the arena 1 time ever in her riding life that she just has to go to this one pace. Not any of the others around. This one specific pace. Which meant that we were out of a babysitter. And she knew that.

Much to my delight, and probably her dismay, our babysitter's mother who is equally as great has offered to drive up to the event behind us and watch W while we ride and then stick around for when her daughter gets there and rides. This is absolutely perfect for us because that means we get to be with W while we load everything up, drive and hang out before we hit the trails and then again as soon as we get back. It means loads more time with W and that makes me super happy :)

I have been wanting to do a give away since I started this blog as a nice reward for hanging in there with me. But I needed a reason to give something away. And I needed something to give away. Well, this pace gives me just the reason. Here is what I am thinking:

• In the comments below, write your best guess as to my completion time for the pace
• It can be over or under, just the closest to what I actually did
• You have from the time I publish this until Sunday at Midnight
• You get 1 entry
• Once I am done I will let you all know how I did and announce the winner
• In the case of a tie, I will figure out what to do

If you need a quick reminder of what a Hunter Pace is, you can go back and read this post: Hunter Pace Described

Unfortunately, I have no clue how far this one is going to be. It is anywhere from 6-12 miles. To help you out a little, I do know that they try to make them around the 2 hour mark. The only other one that actually went off this fall was at Biltmore. The winning Hunter division came in at 1:30 with the last one to finish at 2:30. The Trail division was an hour longer - about 2:30 for the winner and 3:30 for the last people to finish before getting a big DNF (did not finish). I think we are planning to do the hunter division. In reality, I believe we are too fast for trail, but a little slow for hunter. We will see :)

What do you win?? A book! Ten Feet Tall, Still by Julie Suhr I actually have not read it yet, but I have heard that it is a great book, not only for those who ride, but for anyone who has a dream they are chasing. It is on my "To Read" list and so I figured I would send off a copy to the winner.

So...please participate! I will feel like a complete loser if I don't get any guesses at all.